Playful and provocative, Czech novelist and playwright Karel Capek is famed for coining the word robot in his 1929 play R.U.R. He was a vital part of the burgeoning artistic scene of Czechoslovakia between the world wars. But it is his journalism—particularly his brief, sparky opinion columns—that reveals the essential Capek. The pieces collected here are animated by his passion for the ordinary and the everyday—laundry and window cleaning, cats and toothaches—as well as his love of language, his lyrical observations of the world, and above all his humanism. Capek's letters to his wife Olga, also published here, are moving and distinct from his other writings.